Focus Of Braddock Trial Shifts To Checks

NEW HAVEN — — The trial of the campaign finance director for former Speaker of the House Christopher Donovan has provided must-watch political theater, thanks in part to the vulgar, sometimes crude, and grandiose testimony of Harry Raymond Soucy, the government operative who supplied the campaign with money while conspiring to hide the sources.

Between Soucy's tale of placing $5,000 in a legislator's refrigerator, text messages, secretly taped phone calls and a meeting with Donovan clandestinely videotaped, much of the trial has focused on backroom political dealings at the legislature.

On Friday, the focus shifted to the reason that a jury is hearing testimony in U.S. District Court Judge Janet Bond Arterton's courtroom — the case of Robert Braddock, the former campaign finance manager for Donovan's failed congressional campaign, who is facing charges that he knowingly filed false election reports.

Friday's testimony returned to more mundane topics, such as campaign finance reports, election laws and fundraising techniques.

Sara Waterfall, the deputy finance director for the Donovan campaign, testified about an urgent tone in Braddock's voice on May 15, 2012, when he called to ask if she had left for the bank yet to deposit that day's campaign contributions. Braddock then came into her office and told her, "I need to pull a check. It's one of the roll-your-own guys."

Waterfall testified that she asked Braddock, "Why does that matter?" to which Braddock replied, "Just pull it."

Previous testimony showed that Soucy, a former Department of Correction union official who has admitted to arranging to provide Donovan's campaign with hidden contributions from people associated with tobacco shops, had alerted Braddock to the fact that the check was in the name of a tobacco shop employee and should be replaced with a check in someone else's name.

The check was in the name of Benjamin Hogan, an employee of Smoke House Tobacco, a roll-your-own smoke shop with two locations in Waterbury, who has also pleaded guilty to related charges.

Waterfall also testified that Soucy was the highest individual contributor to the Donovan for Congress campaign in the lead-in to the June 2012 nominating convention.

She testified that the $27,500 donated through conduit contributions by Soucy put him well above the next highest fundraisers, who donated about $15,000. Waterfall also said that although she had personally met several of the other large donors to the campaign, she had never met Soucy.

Also Friday, the government introduced text messages related to roll-your-own legislation between Laura Jordan, the former legal counsel to Donovan, and Democratic legislator Joseph Aresimowicz of Berlin, then deputy Speaker of the House.

The text messages were from April 3, 2012, when legislation was introduced in the finance committee that included taxing roll-your-own shops as manufacturers. Aresimowicz, referred to as "A to Z," also was texting Soucy that same day about the updated bill.

The text conversation between Jordan and Aresimowicz begins with Jordan asking whether the proposal to tax the shops would come up that day before the finance committee, of which Aresimowicz was a member.

The text read: "is there going to b sub lang re cigarette rolling for a bill in fin today? If so which bill?"

Aresimowicz responded that the cigarette legislation was added to a Department of Revenue Services' bill and would be voted on that day.

The legislation passed the finance committee but ultimately died in the Senate. It was later passed during a special session in June after federal authorities had arrested eight people, including Braddock.

The government finished up its case Friday, calling a series of witnesses, including one of the women whose name was on a check and a representative of the Federal Elections Commission who testified that the use of conduit contributors is one of the agency's biggest concerns because it is difficult to uncover the fraud.

Braddock is the only one of eight defendants in the case not to plead guilty and, instead, go to trial. On Friday, he told Arterton that he still hasn't decided whether he will testify on his own behalf when testimony resumes next week.

But Braddock might not have much choice because he is the only one who can refute Soucy's account of one of the key moments in this saga — an untaped conversation between Soucy and Braddock during a smoking break at a Waterbury fundraiser.

The meeting occurred at an early Donovan for Congress fundraiser at the City Hall Café on Nov. 15, 2011, which Soucy attended with smoke shop owners or employees Paul Rogers, Benjamin Hogan and George Tirado, who brought the first of 11 $2,500 checks that would be donated to the campaign through conduit contributors.

Soucy and Braddock were both outside having a cigarette when, Soucy testified, he told Braddock that "the money they were putting together was going to be from RYO people even though their names aren't on it."

Soucy testified that Braddock responded that you "gotta watch out for men in black when there's money involved." Soucy said he took that to mean FBI agents could be watching.

Soucy said that as they finished their cigarettes, Braddock mentioned not to talk about money in front of Donovan at a breakfast meeting that was scheduled the next morning.

Under cross-examination, defense attorney Frank Riccio II focused on the fact that the conversation was the first time that Soucy had met Braddock and that it wasn't taped so the jury would have to take his word.